Advanced Senior English is for the college-bound senior who has successfully completed at least one AP English class or a dual-enrolled English class. You are a skillful writer, and you want to hone your edge as you prepare for college. With your high school journey coming to an end, you also want to enjoy the flexibility that homeschooling offers, so this asynchronous college-prep class has been planned with choice and relevance in mind.

 

Class Details

• Advanced Senior English is a full-year class.

• Tuition: $750

• Instructor: Marcy Swisher

• Dates: August 21, 2023 to May 5, 2024. See our FAQ for a complete list of dates and breaks.

• Format: This is an asynchronous class, so there are no live meeting dates. 

  • While this class is highly active, all interaction takes place in a text-based fashion on the class website.

• Grade level: College-Bound Seniors​

• Prerequisites:

  • Successfully completed an AP or Community College English class

  • If your student has not taken AP or CC classes but has successfully completed a class at that level, we just request writing samples. Please contact us.

• Class size: 10-13

• Course materials are listed HERE.

• This course is NCAA-approved.

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College Apps

College applications loom large for seniors in the fall, so you'll start off reading two time-tested resources about the college admissions process and working on your college essays. Chances are good that you'll be applying to several different colleges and writing multiple essays—very likely a common app essay, school-specific essays, and maybe scholarship essays.

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• In the first six weeks of class, you'll peruse sample application essays, briefly discussing their strengths and weaknesses with your classmates.

• And as you dive in and begin planning and writing your own essays, you'll establish brainstorming, draft, and revision checkpoints for yourself.

• Your instructor will be an active resource for you--helping you stay accountable to your planning and completion deadlines, and acting as a sounding board for fine-tuning improvements.
   

The Choice is Yours
You and your classmates will then move on to choice-driven reading and a variety of writing genres. You will construct your own "bucket list" of books that you'd like to read before you finish high school--choosing books to fit within each of these fiction and non-fiction categories:

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• Non-Fiction

  • Biography or Memoir

  • Psychology or Sociology

  • Science or History

  • Current Issue

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•  Fiction

  • American or British Novel

  • World Literature Novel

  • Contemporary Novel

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•   Fiction or Non-Fiction

  • Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award Winner/Finalist

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You'll have the opportunity to dive in and choose your own reading list! And if you'd like a little bit of help, that will be offered. While you and your classmates will be reading different books throughout the year, you'll be reading from the same category of books at any given time. There will be opportunities to briefly share and compare in online forums.​

 

Refresh and Reinforce

After you finish reading each of your books, you'll write a paper that is connected to it--with the genres and formats changing, essay to essay.

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• Eight different kinds of writing assignments (approximately one per month) are planned to help you reinforce what you know and explore writing modes you may not yet have seen.

• Colleges--and academic disciplines within them--have their own formatting and citation preferences, so you'll get the chance to explore and practice the nuts and bolts of MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian conventions.

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It's unlikely you'll need help navigating the grammar weeds, but your instructor will "meet you" wherever you are in your writing journey to help you strengthen your skills and rise to the next level.

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A Year-Long Conversation

Your Moodle classroom will be home base. That's where you'll receive instruction and interact with your teacher and classmates. In weekly, on-going text-based discussion forums you can look forward to meeting and getting to know other college-bound seniors from across the country who have a diverse array of interests and backgrounds

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• You will participate in weekly conversations that zoom in on current news and issues that are important to you.

• You'll draw your topics from the major newspapers and nationally-renowned magazines that you and your classmates choose, individually, to read. You'll pass the baton, week to week, to other classmates who will offer up their own news or informational articles for class consideration.

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While the conversation with your classmates will be active, forum participation expectations will be set at a reasonable level so that the time commitment is relatively small and the interaction welcome and enjoyable.

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Advanced Senior English has been designed to maximize a core benefit of home schooling --> choice. Join a class of interesting, talented students from across the country, and tailor your senior year of English to focus on what matters most to you! 

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